A rather magnificent specimen of rainbowfish, prized and coveted for aquarium owners around the globe, is staring into the abyss, and could possibly face extinction since their home is drying up, and alien fish seem to be moving in.

The rainbowfish, Melanotaenia parva, was was described by accomplished ichthyologist Dr. Gerald Allen back in 1990. These magnificent rainbowfish hail from Kuromoi Lake on the Bird’s Head Peninsula in West Papua, Indonesia.

Melanotaenia parva

At the time of their discovery, the rainbow fish were abundant, however the water seemed to be receding. The level of the water of the lake had already reached levels lower than the outlet with the Yakati River, however more unsettling was the discovery that a non-native Tilapia had made its way on to the scene. Now, researchers have commenced a new study and have found some good news, and bad news.. Good news, a bright colorful new species of rainbow fish.. Bad news.. Lake Kuromi, where these rainbow fish call home, is almost completely dry.

Now a new study by scientists who have just described a new species of rainbowfish from the Bird’s Head Peninsula have shown that its home – Lake Kuromoi – is now almost completely dry.

These startling discoveries were made back in June 2007, but have only now made their way to the public eye. To top it all off, as if having your home dry out wasn’t bad enough, the rainbowfish now need to compete for survival with a rogue species of Tilapia.

What is to become of these poor rainbowfish?

Melanotaenia fasinensis location

Researchers have just discovered and described a new rainbow fish which hails from West Papua, Indonesia.

Ichthyologists, also known as fish scientists to us normal folk, Paradis, Pouyaud, Kadarusman and Sudarto are credited with the find and have dubbed the new kind of rainbow fish Melanotaenia fasinensis. They published this in a paper in the journal Cybium.

The new rainbow fish was found in the Fasin River, just about 25 clicks west of Lake Ayamaru on the West Papua’s Bird’s Head Peninsula.

The little guy was found floating about in a 1 meter deep, 4.5 meter wide stream, surrounded by flush greenery.

This rainbow fish lives over a substrate of gravel, and makes its home amongst limestone boulders and debris of fallen branches from the forest.

The Fasin River also boasts a myriad of other species such as sleeper gobies, and different types of crayfish.

The Bird’s Head Peninsula in Indonesia is considered a hotspot when one is going about and trying to find rainbow fish. There are many different kinds of rainbow fish which also call the place home, and they all seem to live in harmony with one another.

It’s good to see that the scientific world has not given up on seeking new kinds of this beautiful fish. Not only are they pretty to look at, but they are key to the survival of all the species in that ecosystem.

Some people have been trying to catch them and sell them off as pets, however an ordinance is in place telling people to refrain from such a practice.

Gambusia affinis

As you all know, not to long ago Haiti suffered quite a horrible shock, an earthquake ripped through the country, killing more than 230,000 human beings. Million of people donated money, time, food, water and supplies to those devastated by the tragedy..

However, one group of well wishers and supporters sent something new and interesting.. They sent fish.

Somewhere in the neighborhoos of 2,000 tiny fish have been sent over from Mississippi to try and help control the spread of diseases such as the West Nile virus and Malaria. The fish are known as the mosquito fish, a more proper name is Gambusia.

Just one of these amazing fish can eat several hundred of the mosquitoes and their babies each day. It isn’t the first time fish have been used in such a manner. Back after Karina these Gambusia were called in and helped to kill of mosquitoes and their babies there as well.

The group behind sending in the fish is a humanitarian group known as Operation Blessin International. Once they had their volunteers set foot on the ground they immediately knew it was time to call in the fish.

“I came to Haiti in May of 2009 and right away I noticed a lot of mosquitoes here,” Horan, one of the leaders of the group commented. “And they have malaria. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to bring mosquito fish to Haiti.”

Lionfish photo by Jens Petersen

Well, isn’t this just a kick in the pants… The invasive, not to mention sneaky, lionfish has been spotted off of Alabama and Pensacola this past week, which is confirming the belief that the lionfish have made a full scale invasion of the Gulf Of Mexico, despite the BP oil spill fiasco, and are now a danger to other sea faring critters in the area.

Researchers think the sneaky little buggers made their way into U.S. Waters because of the aquarium trade.

Scuba divers got together to try and capture these invading lionfish in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary this past Saturday and over 500 of the suckers were reeled in.

In studies performed in the Bahamas, these tiny invaders have been eating up anywhere up to sixty percent of the fish native to the waters and coral reefs where they were making their home.

“I am surprised it took so long,” commented head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, George Crozier. “The way they’ve established themselves along the Atlantic, there really wasn’t any doubt they would arrive here… It was just a question of when.”

So, lionfish are apparently here to stay, and despite our rather inhospitable welcome, we are inviting them to our restaurant dinner plates as the main course, they appear to be flourishing where they should not be found in the first place.

Of course this pattern will continue to increase, and in the near future, perhaps they will be like the cockroaches of the sea, impossible to get rid of, and a huge pain in the backside.

Whole Foods has just launched a special color coded sustainability rating program for all their products. This new program is very revolutionary. What it does, is that all their products will now be color coded based on the danger posed to the sealife that come in that partocular product.

Green means “go ahead and shop till you drop”, yellow means “Caution. some concerns are being raised with the species”, and red means “you really shouldn’t be buying this product at all”.

They are aiming to phase out all products which are classified as “red”, which means that they are highly over fished and at risk, by Earth Day in the year 2013.

They have partnered up with Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute to help them categorize their products. Whole Foods is the first such national grocer which will have such a system in place, and it is causing waves throughout the industry.

Both Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute are well known and respected for their science-based seafood programs. They painstakingly evaluate species and the fisheries which reel them in, and categorize them based on life history, abundance, habitat impacts, fishery management practices and bycatch.

It’s good to see big business finally taking an interest in keeping the Earth and its oceans in prime condition, and not just worrying about their bottom line.

Lionfish - A problematic invasive species

You can forget about such trivialities as the amberjack or snapper. Over one hundred divers have managed to bring in more than five hundred Indo-Pacific red lionfish during the first group effort to help decrease the numbers of this wily invader which has set its sights on the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The first of three such get togethers, cleverly dubbed lionfish derbies, brought in some twenty-seven teams which were all gun ho on earning the sweet cash and prizes being dangled in front of them to bring in the most, biggest, and mot tiny lionfish. The big enchilada, one thousand dollars, was given to the group which managed to snare in one hundred and eleven lionfish.

The next “derby” is shceduled to take place this coming October 16th, weather permitting, at Keys Fisheries restaurant in Marathon, and the final event is said to be November 13th at the Hurricane Hole Marina in Key West.

A representative of the Reef Environmental Education Foundation, Lad Akins, has commented that the lionfish are being released inadvertently by pet owners into the Atlantic, and since they have no natural enemies, they are free to breed and take over.

These lionfish have become quite an item, them being offered up in restaurants and such to help keep them down.. Only time will tell if we are winning the battle, or losing…

Chagos Islands

Well, it’s nice to see there is still some decency in the world today. A Billionaire from Switzerland has used some of their vast resources to help save plans to create the largest marine reserve in the world, and alleviate the pressures placed upon it from public spending cuts.

Government officials are currently engaged in talks over a 3.5 million GBP deal for Ernesto Bertarelli, America’s Cup-winning yachtsman, to help fund the efforts to police the zone around the Chagos Islands.

The area which is due to be protected, dubbed the MPA, is going to cover quite a bit of area. The proposal is to cover somewhere around 250,000 square miles of sea around the archipelago in the Indian Ocean and include a “not take” reserve which is going to ban commercial fishing.

The plan was approved last April by David Miliband, then foreign secretary, even though there were complaints that the government was not taking the territory’s exiled population into consideration.

You see, the Chagos have been in the midst of a heated debate for a long time now, due to the fact that the islanders were exiled to make way for the Diego Garcia US airbase, and are continuing legal proceedings to return to their homes.

There are still other concerns that the project may fail due to the lack of private funding to offset the amount they would lose from tuna fishing licenses.

So, hats off to the billionaire for trying, and hopefully it will be pushed through. It isn’t often a billionaire steps aside and tries to do something good in the world.

Flyingfish

We all know about those birds which are just at home in the water as they are in the air, however, not too many species of fish can say the same thing. Flying fish can actually stay up in the air for more than half a minute, and can glide as far as 400 meters and reach speeds of up to 70 kilometers per hour!

A mechanical engineer from Seoul National University in Korea, Haecheon Choi, took a shine to the flying fish as he was reading a science book to his children. By coming to the realization that flying fish actually FLY, he and his collegue, Hyungmin Park, set about to figure out just how these fish stay up in the air so long and then publish their discovery in The Journal of Experimental Biology, which they did this past 10th of September. They had some remarkable results in tsts conducted in a wind tunnel of all places.. They found that the flying fish were just as efficient at gliding as birds were, and more effective than many forms of insects at it.

Now that Choi and Park have proven to the world that flying fish are exceptional fliers, they are now setting up for their next big task.. Building an aircraft which will exploit the ground effect aerodynamics which flying fish use to their benefit.

Dwarf sea horse

There are tens of thousands of dwarf seahorses trying to survive in the oil infested Gulf of Mexico, and a researcher from the University of British Columbia is saying that their difficulties serves as a warning to not let BP to expand its operations to the West Coast.

Now the dwarf seahorse is at great risk of becoming extinct after the BP mess happened this past April, and it isn’t being helped any by the non-friendly methods for clearing up the mess, commented the director of the international project Seahorse conservation group, Amanda Vincent.

“We’re concerned that some lessons be learned for Canada from this fiasco,” Vincent commented during a press conference this past Tuesday.

“If we were to have an oil spill on this coast, either from tanker traffic or from drilling — if the moratorium were lifted — then we would also see them and everything else in their habitats severely affected.”

While a provincial, as well as federal, moratorium is in place against any kind of oil exploration on the north coast of British Columbia is in effect, the First Nations and other environmental organizations have cautioned of the dangers of putting in an oil pipeline.

And with what happened in the Gulf of Mexico who could blame them? We really need to step back, and force the big oil companies to take extra precautionary measures, before allowing to operate anywhere else in the world…

Stickleback

Recent research has come to the astonishing conclusion that fish, specifically the males, positively refuse to ask for directions when they are breeding.

A recent research project, by the University of St. Andrews, has found that male fish seem to become more anti-social feeders, becoming even more so when they are ready to spawn.

As a result of this, they put themselves in greater peril, by leaving the shoal behind.

The claim is being made by researchers in charge of the project that this is one of the first studies performed that has shown a differences in the sexes when it comes to how animals learn from one another.

The current belief is that this trait is only seen in male fish when they are getting ready to spawn or are spawning, and may correlate to the distinct pressures faced by the sexes when spawning.

The research was conducted by Dr. Mike Webster and Professor Kevin Laland, whose goal was to take a look at the copying and learning behaviors of ninespine stickleback.

It appears the males tend to look for food reserves on their own, so that they can properly protect their young when the time comes, and this is why they don’t feed together.

Dr Webster added: “We are all familiar with the stereotype of males refusing to ask for directions – this might apply to fish too, but only when they are preparing to breed.”